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Team Health Checks

Why do we need a health check?

Health checks, named appropriately, provide an insight into team health. They get the team to step back and reflect on a longer period, which highlights issues which may seem too entrenched to change. They are intentionally reductionist in their scoring so that each member is made to think more absolutely. The resulting insights provide the team's sentiment on a number of wide ranging topics that affect the health of a delivery team. This sentiment is a snapshot of the team's current health.

Health checks become even more useful when a team has done more than one and other teams have also undergone a health check. At this point you can compare a team's scores and dig into the reasons why they feel better or worse about a topic than they previously did, or why another team feels differently than they do. This provides ideas for experiments which teams can undertake in a bid to improve that aspect of their health. Comparison of many teams can highlight a department wide issue that once made aware of, the company can then address.

What is a health check?

A team health check is effectively a broader retrospective. The topics that are reviewed are up to theam, but it is advised that they should assess the core topics laid out by Spotify in 2014. The easiest method to capture a health check is using teamhealthcheck.io. The advised topics are:

  • Easy to Release
  • Suitable process
  • Tech Quality
  • Value
  • Speed
  • Mission
  • Fun
  • Learning
  • Support
  • Pawns or Players

Participants are asked to rank each topic between overwhelmingly negative, neutral, or overwhelmingly positive with a brief description of how the negative or positive response may look that differs for each topic. For example, Pawns or Players has the response options of "We are just pawns in a game of chess, with no influence over what we build or how we build it", "Mehh", or "We are in control of our destiny! We decide what to build and how to build it".

Once the results are collated for all participants, it is advised that the facilitator goes through each topic as they are ranked from worst to best and canvasses the team for qualitative feedback about why they think the team views that topic that way. Notes about the responses from the team should be taken to form the informative content the explains the team's views about the topic. When further health checks take place, these notes can then be referred to after talking about the current feedback and further feedback can be provided about why the team thinks the sentiment has changed, if it has.

It is not important whether or not someone feels the teams views are objective. The teams views are an indicator of their health, and by addressing their greatest concerns it is expected to see a rise in their health overall. It would gravely undermine psychological safety of a team to simply suggest that they are wrong.

How do I facilitate a health check?

Participants should fill out the survey indivudally first. A common time saving tactic is to get this filled out ahead of time, so that the shared session can begin with the discussion and feedback. These answers should then be collated into an average for discussion. It is worth discussing the value that health checks can provide, in order for the team to understand why they are having the session and the value that it givesd to them. First and foremost that their concerns are heard and will be acted upon.

The facilitator should ask open ended questions, prompting the participants to share their views on why they think the team has responded in the way that they have. It is important that all participants are actively engaged in the discussion and if someone has not conrtributed around a topic, then they should be directly asked if they have anything further to add.

It is natural that participants will have certain topics they have stronger views about, and talk more on those than others, but if participants are largely unengaged throughout then that is an indicator that they do not see the value in the health check. The best way to help someone see the value is to deliver the value. Look to the easiest/swiftest problems that the team are facing and address them as soon as possible. The result should be a more engaged health check when it is next visited.

Who should be a part of a health check?

Each cross functional member of the delivery team and a facilitator. Primarily, the people who have been working together on the same project daily. The facilitator may be a member of the team, or a guest that is invited to ensure all members of the team can focus on sharing their views. Based on our current shape of teams, it is expected that software engineers, test engineers, and product managers would be required to attend.

When should we do a health check?

A team can host a health check as often, or as infrequently, as they like. It is advised that a team aims to complete a health check once a quarter though. This provides sufficient time since the previous health check to address some of the concerns, whilst not leaving it so long that the previous health check feels like a distant memory. Like all things, they should be leveraged in a way the team feels is most effective.

Where can I find an example of a health check?

The first health check in this format was carried out by Team Tyrannotitan, now Team Search, and an example can be found under their Ways of Working in the Platform Development Knowledgebase.